COUNTERDEMONSTRATION IN NEW YORK
A good example of the capacity of the capitalist press to lie with a coolness that would have won the approval of Dr. Joseph Paul Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, was provided by the Associated Press immediately following the October 21 demonstration in Washington, the biggest yet seen in the U.S. capital.
To believe the Associated Press, the biggest and most impressive demonstration was staged the next day -- in New York. And it was not an antiwar denonstration but a demonstration that aimed at offsetting the action in Washington!
According to the Associated Press, "More than 100,000 persons in the New York metropolitan area demonstrated peacefully in support of GIs in Vietnam Sunday [October 22] at a two-day vigil and a spate of parades. At least another 100,000 watched."
This counterdemonstration was sponsored by the "National Committee for Responsible Patriotism," according to the Associated Press; and the activities included an appeal over radio and television to motorists to keep their headlights burning as a show of support.
The newscasts on television hardly bore out the claims of the Associated Press, although the television stations did their utmost to collaborate in building up the counterdemonstration, giving it even more coverage than was granted to the huge demonstration in Washington.
The "masses" shown on TV boiled down to a group of children of Boy Scout age, dressed in uniforms like those worn in the Continental army under the command of George Washington. They played such patriotic airs on their fifes as "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
The "crowd" appeared to consist mostly of fond parents.
The performance was supervised by aged members of the super patriotic American Legion.
The main speaker was the head of the National Committee for Responsible Patriotism and his audience appeared to consist of nothing but television cameras.
It was not without interest that he prefaced his remarks by stressing that this counterdemonstration was not in favor of the war in Vietnam, all that was intended was to show "support for our boys" and to oppose the "subversives" who were allegedly behind the affair in Washington.
The Associated Press made much of the automobiles that traveled with their headlights burning. On television, however, the cameramen were evidently hard pressed to find even a single string of cars that would give the impression of a massive turning on of switches.
The brief shots of this gave convincing evidence of the number of motorists driving with the lights off, and therefore presumably displaying opposition to the war in Vietnan.
In the final paragraph of its dispatch on the counterdemonstration, the AP inadvertently gave the show away: "On the busy Long Island Expressway, 20 to 25 per cent of the cars had headlights on. In Philadelphia, one in 20 cars was reported driving with lights on."
NEW